Harden Lifeboat Ethics Analysis

In 1974, Harden’s “Lifeboat Ethics” came with a really harsh and serious question – “does we have a responsibility for people from third world?”. Hardin argues that the planet is like a lifeboat with such a great number of people desiring entry that if we adopt, for example, Kantian ethics, which value each person as an end-in-themselves, the boat will sink due to weight and everyone will die. Although many may argue that the sanctity of life warrants attempting to save everyone, the reality is that the lifeboat possesses a carrying capacity that dictates the number of people that can logically enter. The environment is actually such a lifeboat, and when resources are stretched while the carrying capacity is exceeded, someone has to die. When
Such decreases in efficacy and fairness harm all citizens in the world while benefitting only the small number that is receiving the food rations. If given plenty of food, they will use much more dung and deprive the soil of nitrogen needed to grow food domestically. This creates more dependency on foreign nations to strain their own food supplies by sending more staples abroad. As an added economic effect, food futures markets would spiral out of control due to the difficulty of predicting the price of food. Shipping huge amounts of food and storing it in countries with unforgiving environments will, as Hardin illustrates, mean that much food is lost to spoiling. Particularly when citizens of these nations are under politically repressive governments, those who need nourishment the most will not receive it. If we know that a dictator would take everything into surrendering their food supplies so as to maintain control, should we give it to them? All these effects of donating food will bring about more harm than